Archive for September 2006
Guy Kawasaki: Andy Sernovitz, the CEO of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, is coming out with a new book called, Word of Mouth Marketing. Here are some ideas, stories, and recommendations from the book that I liked the most: 1. Companies could hire a customer service rep to cruise the Internet looking for kudos [...]
Weekend Entrepreneur: Put Your Free Hours To Work
Entrepreneur: Starting a business using just your weekend hours (and maybe even your weekday evenings) can be a challenge–so we went to Jeff Sloan, co-founder with his brother Rich Sloan of StartupNation LLC, an online outlet for starting and growing a business, and co-author of StartupNation: America’s Leading Entrepreneurial Experts Reveal the Secrets to Building [...]
New Startups Target Vacationers, Retirees
Associated Press: Summer may be a time for kicking back, but not for two entrepreneurs busy with startup television networks catering to people who’ve stepped out of life’s fast lane. A developer of retirement communities is launching a new network on Sept. 5 for that demographic. Initial programming on Retirement Living includes “The Doctor’s Hour,” [...]
MyBusiness.com: When Victoria Pettigrew brushes any one of her 10 pets, she ends up with handfuls of fur. But instead of throwing them away, she saves the tiny tufts so she can spin them into yarn. Sounds strange, but Pettigrew has actually built a good business with pet lovers all over the world. When Pettigrew’s [...]
Teens Want to Start a Business
Inc.com: A growing number of young adults say they favor entrepreneurship. Confirming what parents everywhere probably already know, teenagers overwhelmingly prefer being their own boss, according to a new survey. Of more than 1,400 teens surveyed across the nation earlier this year, nearly 71% said they would like to run a business someday, up from [...]
Four Tips For Advertising Within Your Podcasts:
MarketingSherpa: Although your podcast shouldn’t be just ads, you certainly can and should insert house ads and offers. Four tips on making these work best: 1. Keep advertisements short and in-context. Try to keep ads short — perhaps 10-15 seconds — so it’s not worth the effort to skip over them. Try something like “…speaking [...]
Home School Group Has Answer for eBay’s Textbook Ban
AgapePress: The Home School Legal Defense Association is expressing concern that eBay has banned the sale of teacher’s guides through its online auctions, a move that could drive up the cost of instructional materials for home-schooling families. The new eBay policy prohibits “the sale of teacher’s editions of textbooks and solutions manuals that are intended [...]
Florida Stepping In To Save “Swamp” Buyers On eBay
All Headline News: The state of Florida is stepping in to help buyers who were duped into buying worthless swampland in Florida on the online auction site, eBay. Florida officials say “paper subdivisions” in places like Osceola, Polk, Volusia and Brevard counties contain land which is unsuitable for any construction, yet with names like University [...]
Niche Biz: A Friendlier Needle?
Yahoo News: Researchers at the University of New Mexico’s Health Sciences Center believe they have found a way to make patients less fearful of needles — decorate them with butterflies, flowers and smiley faces. Fear of needles, or needle phobia, can impact the care a patient receives, the researchers said. Such decorations likely interfere with [...]
Five Tips For Producing the Perfect Podcast
MarketingSherpa: Here are five podcast content and production tips: 1. Keep it short. The ideal length of a podcast is 10 minutes to 20 minutes. If you go more than 25 minutes, you’re outside the average commute or past the average treadmill workout. 2. Don’t drone from a script. Use body language to keep your [...]
Tamara Monosoff: For most of us, inventing a new product or starting a new business is foreign territory. And unless you have a crystal ball (and you know how to use it) it’s impossible to expect to make all the right decisions, all the time. Yet certain mistakes in the invention process are very common–I [...]
Diversetrade.com Taking Advantage of eBays Slump
The Dutch owner is positioning the new entry as a “no-nonsense” website that will enable buyers and sellers to conduct business “at a fraction of existing auction website charges.” The reference is to eBay, which recently raised its fees for sellers. By W. David Gardner TechWeb Aug 31, 2006 11:06 AM Seeking to take advantage [...]
eBayers Struggle with Auction Fee Increase Overload
Sheldon Liber with BloggingStocks has written with great precision over the last few weeks on the situation eBay has with its recent raising of fees for sellers along with all the standard backlash that comes along when eBay increases its fees. But this time, something was different.I agree with Sheldon that the most intelligent, well-versed [...]
Home School Group Fights eBay’s Teacher Textbook Ban
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is expressing concern that eBay has banned the sale of teacher’s guides through its online auctions, a move that could drive up the cost of instructional materials for home-schooling families. The new eBay policy prohibits “the sale of teacher’s editions of textbooks and solutions manuals that are intended [...]
The Right eBay Tools to Market Your Product
New eBay retailers are often overwhelmed with all the choices they have to make–what to sell, what to charge, how to list an item. Thankfully, there are numerous tools available to answer those questions. eBay sold the data on every sale they’ve ever made to various companies. They’ve in turn, created tools to interpret that [...]
Fire-The-Coach Web Sites A Big Business
Associated Press: Here’s a bargain for a frustrated Duke football fan. For $50, you can own the Web site where the name says it all — FireTedRoof.com. That’s a steal, because similar sites calling for the dismissals of Bill Callahan at Nebraska or Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State are five times as expensive. But for [...]
Dog-Friendly Office Can Have Positive Impact
Citizen-Times.com: It’s the dog days of August, so it’s time to remind readers of the benefits and pleasures of creating a dog-friendly workplace. Dog-friendly offices are good for dogs, but more importantly, they’re good for business. It certainly helps attract and retain great employees. What can you do to make your business a dog-friendly workplace? [...]
Tips on Creating a Podcast That Works as a Marketing Tool
MarketingSherpa: Many of the most successful podcasts resemble a cross between a regularly published email newsletter with several interesting articles, a personal blog with a strong individual tone and a radio talk show with must-meet guest stars. So the best qualities are: * Strong voice – not just the sound but the style * Steadiness [...]
StartupJournal: For sole proprietors, finding the time to build the firm is one of the biggest challenges. More than a third of owners (35%) of one-person firms say that the toughest part is their inability to focus on generating more business, according to a survey by Score, a nonprofit group of entrepreneurial counselors, and Visa [...]
Jim Blasingame: When working with entrepreneurs, one of the most difficult things consultants, advisors, and mentors have to do is tell their hopeful visionaries when an idea doesn’t have a reasonable chance of success, or simply is not viable. Such advice isn’t meant to de-motivate, or to squash the dream, but rather to ground what [...]
USRobotics introduces USR9630 cordless phone for Skype and domestic callingUsr9630 Still not sure about the merits of Skype versus your traditional landline? How about a device that mixes both, like this USRobotics’ USR9630 cordless phone and base station.The USR9630 connects to both a traditional phone line and an available USB port on a PC running [...]
Bitter eBayers Frustrated with eBay
DESPITE RECORD BREAKING profits in the first quarter of this year(pdf), Ebay is again pushing up costs for its sellers – specifically aiming rises at power-users who are committed to selling on the internet’s leading auction site.Ebay recently hiked up charges for the half a million online stores that operate on the site, which provoked [...]
eBay India, the online marketplace that offers person-to-person trading, is targetting sellers in the rural markets. The company is also expecting 50 per cent of eBay buyers to come from small towns in the next 5 years. �We are training people in the rural areas to sell products on eBay. Handicrafts and products that are [...]
eBay Still Taking Hits From Fee Increase
Shares of most Internet companies traded on the downside Thursday, including auctioneer eBay Inc., which shed more than 2% following an analyst’s review of the fallout from new fees the company recently began collecting to list some sale items. Shares of eBay fall on fee increase report – MarketWatch
Contrary to what you may believe, Skype is primarily used for business, not home use. So concludes a Cornell University study of Skype use.The study found that Skype use peaks during working hours, and tails off during the evening.It found that usage during the night dropped by 40% to 50% compared to use during the [...]
